ANT ACACIAS AND ACACIA ANTS SAFFORD. 391 



posterior extremity of his body as well as by the form of his an- 

 tennae, which are not elbowed like the workers 1 , but made up of 

 numerous beadlike segments. Both the male and the workers have, 

 in addition to the large compound eyes on the sides of the head, 

 three small simple eyes, called ocelli, on top of the head. These 

 are scarcely visible in the photographs but are shown in the draw- 

 ings. 



Ants of the same variety, Psevklomyrma belli var. fulvescens, were 

 collected by Dr. E. A. Schwarz near Tampico, in January, 1910. In 

 a paper read before the Entomological Society of Washington he 

 fully corroborates the original observations of Belt as to the effi- 

 ciency of the ants as a bodyguard, in defending their host from men, 

 cattle, and insects. The acacias were extremely abundant, bordering 

 the roadsides and covering great stretches of the sandy hammock 

 along the seabeach. The principal, if not the only species, of that 

 locality was Acacia sphaerocephala, every bush of which was ten- 

 anted by Pseudomyrmas. At the time of his visit, the latter part of 

 December and the first part of January, the bushes were covered 

 with flowers and young buds. Doctor Schwarz Avas interested chiefly 

 in collecting beetles. He found a small weevil abundant, the perfect 

 insects on the inflorescences both mature and immature, the larvae in 

 the seeds. They seemed to be the only insects which the ants would 

 tolerate. When Doctor Schenck beat the bushes with his collecting 

 net the ants would swarm out in great numbers and sting him. The 

 only way he could collect successfully was to make a preliminary 

 survey of the space beyond the bushes and then rush through the 

 thicket at full speed beating the bushes with his net in passing and 

 escaping before the ants had time to issue from the thorns. " I did 

 not mind the thorns at all," he declared, " but the stings of the ants 

 were something fierce." Only one species of beetle was collected by 

 him, a weevil at first believed to be a species of Bruchis. A more 

 recent study of it, however, has led Mr. J. C. Bridwell to place it in 

 a genus apart from Bruchis, from which it appears to be distin- 

 guished by the possession of an ovipositor. 



In close proximity with the living trees was a dead acacia, which 

 the ants had quite deserted. It had in all probability been killed by 

 some insect boring into its roots, a fact which indicates that the ants 

 are powerless to protect their host against the attacks of an under- 

 ground enemy. The roots penetrated the ground to a great depth 

 and resisted all attacks to pull them out ; but Doctor Schwarz brought 

 back to Washington parts of the trunk and larger branches infested 

 by beetle larva? and parasitic Hymenoptera, from which he bred 

 perfect insects. 



